CHICAGO – It’s a shame how box office numbers play such a large factor in Oscar votes. Just imagine if “The Blind Side” was a flop. Sandra Bullock wouldn’t have been allowed within a billion miles of the Oscar podium. If Ben Lewin’s “The Sessions” was given a fair shot with audiences, it would’ve easily brought its star, John Hawkes, an Oscar nomination.

CHICAGO – Sometimes an actor can deliver on so many levels at once that it makes flaws of a film easier to overlook. I’ll admit that while watching “The Sessions,” I was so caught up in the honest, true performance from the great John Hawkes that I didn’t consider many of the film’s dramatic failings until I began to consider my review.

CHICAGO – Sure to be one of the best performances of 2012 is John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien, a polio victim who lived on his own and was a poet, despite no movement from his neck down, and confined for most of the day in an iron lung. Ben Lewin wrote the screenplay and directed the extraordinary story of “The Sessions.”

CHICAGO – Oscar winning actress Helen Hunt has emerged recently with the lead role in “The Sessions,” in which she portrays a sex therapist counseling a handicapped man played by John Hawkes. The Junior Board of the Chicago International Film Festival screened “The Sessions” and honored Helen Hunt with a Red Carpet appearance on October 20th, 2012.

CHICAGO – You’re going to be reading a lot about “The Sessions” in the coming weeks as it expands from its already-successful art house run and weaves through an awards season in which it will likely be nominated more than once. John Hawkes leads the film as man who lives in an iron lung and longs to feel human contact.

CHICAGO – In its final days, the 48th Annual Chicago International Film Festival is poised to close with a glorious bang. Chicago native Robert Zemeckis (of “Back to the Future” and “Forrest Gump” fame) will return to the festival for the closing night screening of “Flight,” a thriller starring Denzel Washington. It’s Zemeckis’s first live-action feature since 2000’s “Cast Away.”

CHICAGO – The full schedule has been announced for the 48th Annual Chicago Film Festival, which runs from October 11 to October 25, 2012 and opens with a red carpet appearance by Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, & Alan Arkin and ends with one by Robert Zemeckis.

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CHICAGO – “Speech & Debate,” the latest production from the mighty Brown Paper Box Company, continues their tradition of thinking outside that “box” in presenting storefront theater that makes a statement and a difference. “Speech” goes inside America by showcasing the outsiders… those who create art because they can’t get it right in real life. This non-equity Chicago stage play premiere is finely tuned and wonderfully acted, and runs through March 4th, 2018. Click here for more details, including ticket information.

CHICAGO – The 1960s were a time of historical social transition. The movements – civil rights, feminist, gay rights – all had roots in that tumultuous decade. The Chicago premiere of Basil Kreimendahl’s “We’re Gonna Be Okay” echoes all of those movements in its characters, and collides them against the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The show has a Thursday-Sunday run at the American Theater Company through March 4th, 2018. Click here for more details, including ticket information.